David Axelrod on CNN was responding to a comment that President Obama was not always correct and made the comment, “No president has a batting average of 100 percent.” This is a congruent conflation of “batting a thousand” and “right 100 percent of the time”, both meaning to be right all the time. The submitter of this malaphor, Bob Marchinetti, noted that batting averages are not expressed this way. Bob would know, as he is an expert on baseball. Check out his great book, “Pirate Gold: The 1960 Season” available on Amazon. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Gold-Season-Bob-Marchinetti/dp/1628383275. A big thanks to Bob for hearing this one and sending it in!

Another excellent one from the sports world. The Baltimore Ravens held a pre-draft press conference during which GM Ozzie Newsome said that “nobody bats a hundred in this business.” This is a mash up of “nobody gets a hundred percent right” (no one is perfect) and “batting a thousand” (baseball expression – doing something extremely well and better than expected). The idiom “giving 110 percent” (going above and beyond what a person thinks he is capable) also might have been in the speaker’s mind. You can hear this malaphor at @ 15:15 at the following link: